Alabama

In this Dec. 26, 1956 file photo, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, center in hat, rides with white and other black passengers on a city bus in Birmingham, Ala., six days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the buses must integrate. Shuttlesworth boarded hours after a bomb exploded inside his Collegeville, Ala., house. (The Birmingham News file/Robert Adams)

DECEMBER 12, 1963 -- Two Alabama segregationists, National States' Rights Party members Robert Lyons and Edward Fields, arrested in Fairfield for handing out leaflets, found an unlikely ally as their case went before the U.S. Supreme Court -- the NAACP.

The organization, in its brief, stated it abhorred the anti-Semitic and racist views of the NSRP but added, "Punishment cannot be inflicted for the peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights."

Frank Parsons, an attorney for Fairfield, argued: "They should not be so protected as to endanger the basic fabric of our society and government."

The court also voided the conviction of Fred Shuttlesworth arrested years earlier when he rode in the 'whites only' section of a Birmingham bus.